An Open Letter to the Rice Thresher

Every week, we count on your newspaper to provide us one or two articles that we can read two sentences of and then throw away. We were shocked when we picked up a copy of your newspaper today and noticed that something was a little off.

We had a good thing going, you and us. You guys published your weekly newspapers filled with monotonous budgetary information and unnoticed tennis updates, and we sat in Pub every Wednesday night trying (and, on rare occasion, succeeding) to be funny.

What could have pushed you all to move into The Mockingbird’s territory? We know this can’t be a simple April Fools’ joke. There’s a deeper issue here, and we would love to open up a dialogue with the Thresher leadership to figure out what it is.

Don’t get us wrong: we love the Thresher and its role on campus. We cherish your one article per year that stirs up buzz for a week before everyone forgets about it because some college has a bunch of corgis for an afternoon. We greatly admire your honest-to-goodness journalistic professionalism, which especially shines through during your email-conducted interviews.

It saddens us that such drastic measures were needed for the Thresher to gain readers. Why, why did you do this, Thresher? Whether it was financial trouble, consistently low readership or the pressure facing print media today, we may never know.

Every week, this campus only has to endure one page of unfunny attempts at satire. Today, we had to deal with four. Thresher, listen to our invocation. We’ll do anything to stop this madness. Please let us know what we can do to help you go back to doing what you do best: uninspired news articles, I-could-have-read-something-better-on-Pitchfork album reviews, and updates on the struggles of the Rice basketball program.

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HOUSTON, TX – Debuting late Tuesday night, the Thresher celebrated April Fools Day with a new and revised template and slant. Going by “the Rice Trasher”, the University publication shifted its aim to criticize and lambast the university, appearing both significant and humorous for the first time in years. Despite being the antithesis of what [...]